"Mistake for Love"
Former High School Teacher Regrets Affair With Her One-Time Student
Heather Ingram says she now regrets having an affair with her former student.
V A N C O U V E R, British Columbia, Sept. 30, 2004 -- Until Heather Ingram met Dusty Dickeson, she never considered risking her successful teaching career for the attention of a boy, even if he embodied everything she desired during her own high school days.
I can remember the first time I saw Dusty. I actually did a double-take. I went, 'Oh! He's beautiful.' He was just stunning," Ingram said on ABC News' Good Morning America.
He was and probably still is the person that I would have been attracted to in high school who would not have known my name," she said.
Five years ago, Ingram, now 35, was a well-respected, award-winning high school teacher in a town outside Vancouver, British Columbia. But her admiration for one of her students went too far.
Ingram's sexual affair began with Dickeson an 11th-grader in her accounting class when he was 17, just five months shy of becoming a legal adult.
As Ingram chronicles in her book, Risking It All: My Student, My Lover, My Story, she was flattered when Dickeson, an attractive and popular student, showed her atttention.
The sexual relationship began after Ingram invited Dickeson and some of his peers over to watch a video at her home one night. When Dickeson's friends left, he stayed on and the two made love for the first time.
After that night, Ingram promised herself that it wouldn't happen again, but when Dickeson called the next day, she agreed to meet him.
After 10 months, Ingram was forced to confess the affair to the school principal after another teacher threatened to expose her.
Ingram was fired from her teaching position and charged with exploiting a minor. Dickeson told authorities that the affair was consensual, but Ingram was sentenced to 10 months under house arrest.
After Ingram's secret was exposed, she and Dickeson moved in together and he quit school. The couple eventually had a son together, who is now 10 months old. But in the end, the relationship didn't survive. Ingram says the age difference proved to be too much.
"Do I feel that I exploited Dusty, which is really what I was convicted of? No. I don't feel like I did that. And he doesn't either. What I feel like I did was make a huge mistake for love."
Ingram says she now sees why she should have fought her feelings, instead of acting on them. But the former teacher says she has to forgive herself to take care of their son.
I think we damaged each other in a lot of ways," Ingram said. "I think mostly I damaged myself by making, what in retrospect, was such a poor decision."
Scotland's National Newspaper
96% of women are liars, honest
5,000 women polled
Half the women said that if they became pregnant by another man but wanted to stay with their partner, they would lie about the baby's real father.
Forty-two per cent would lie about contraception in order to get pregnant, no matter the wishes of their partner.
Canada's largest
national newspaper
Mommy's little secret
The article contains info about children's identity fraud at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
December 14, 2002.
Includes interview with employees of Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Ontario, Canada who admit they deny children's identity information to husbands/male partners of mothers who want to hide the real identity of their child because they had an affair. The U.N. Convention on the Rights of The Child specifically supports a child's human right to have a relationship with both his/her biological parents. In addition, this article is proof that The Hospital for Sick Children ("Sick Kids") supports paternity fraud.
Further "Sick Kids" supports a mother's rights only, which they view, supersedes 3 other people's rights, namely, the rights of the biological father, the rights of the mother's male partner/husband and the child's identity rights.
One in 25 fathers 'not the daddy'
Up to one in 25 dads could unknowingly be raising another man's child, UK health researchers estimate.
Increasing use of genetic testing for medical and legal reasons means Read More ..uples are discovering the biological proof of who fathered the child.
The Liverpool John Moores University team reached its estimate based on research findings published between 1950 and 2004.
The study appears in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
Biological father
Professor Mark Bellis and his team said that the implications of so-called
paternal discrepancy were huge and largely ignored, even though the
incidence was increasing.
In the US, the number of paternity tests increased from 142,000 in 1991 to 310,490 in 2001.
Adulterous woman ordered to pay husband £177,000 in 'moral damages'
The Daily Mail, UK
18th February 2009
An adulterous Spanish woman who conceived three children with her lover has been ordered to pay £177,000 in 'moral damages' to her husband.
The cuckolded man had believed that the three children were his until a DNA test eventually proved they were fathered by another man.
The husband, who along with the other man cannot be named for legal reasons to protect the children's identities, suspected his second wife may have been unfaithful in 2001.
Biology, not heart, provokes women's infidelity
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
January 15, 2009
BEAUTIFUL women who have affairs can now blame it on their sex hormones.
Women with higher levels of oestradiol, a form of oestrogen, not only look and feel more attractive, they are also more likely to cheat on their partners, a new study has found.
One-night-stands are not what interest these flirtatious females, who tend to have bigger breasts, relatively small waists and symmetrical faces as a result of their high levels of oestradiol.
Rather, they adopt a strategy of serial monogamy, say the researchers, led by Kristina Durante of the University of Texas.
Paternity fraud: Is it or should it be a criminal offence under the Criminal Code of Canada?
You be the judge.
Who Knows Father Best?
Feminist organizations including the National Organization of Women (NOW) has objected to legislation that requires the courts to vacate paternity judgments against men who arent, in fact, the father.
Think about that. NOW wants some man, any man, to make child support payments. The woman who doesnt even know who the father is, should not be held responsible for her actions, is a sweet, loving, blameless mother who seeks only to care for her child and if naming some schmuck as father who never saw her before in his life helps her provide for the innocent babe, well then, that's fine.
Innocence is no excuse. Pay up. Read More ..
ABC
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT
Broadcast: November 22, 2004
Who's Your Daddy?
Last year, more than 3,000 DNA paternity tests were commissioned by Australian men, and in almost a quarter of those cases, the test revealed that not only had their partners been unfaithful, but the children they thought were theirs had been sired by someone else. Read More ..
DNA: Why the truth can hurt
The Sunday Times
Australia
March 27, 2005
IT sounded too good to be true and it was.
The fairytale that saw Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott reunited with the son he thought he had given up for adoption 27 years ago, ABC sound-recordist Daniel O'Connor, ended this week when DNA tests confirmed another man had fathered Mr O'Connor.
The revelations were devastating for all involved, not least Mr O'Connor.
Still reeling from the emotional reunion with his mother, Kathy Donnelly, and Mr Abbott a few months ago, a simple test of truth has thrown the trio into disarray a situation familiar to thousands of other Australians.
Paternity testing in Australia is a burgeoning industry.
The simplicity of the test cells are collected from a mouth swab grossly underestimates the seriousness of the situation.
Fathers May Get Money Back in Paternity Fraud Cases
18 March, 2005
FindLaw, Australia
Proposed new laws will make it easier for fathers to recover child maintenance payments if DNA testing reveals that they are not the child's father.
The Family Law Amendment Bill 2005 allows people who wrongly believed they were the parent of a child to recover any child maintenance paid or property transferred under an order of a court under the Family Law Act 1975 .
"The bill is intended to make it easier for people who find themselves in this position to take recovery action without the need to initiate separate proceedings for an order from a court of civil jurisdiction, such as a State, Local or Magistrates court," Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said.
Men wage battle on 'paternity fraud'
USA TODAY, by Martin Kasindorf, December 12, 2002
An acid sense of betrayal has been gnawing at Damon Adams since a DNA test showed that he is not the father of a 10-year-old girl born during his former marriage.
"Something changes in your heart," says Adams, 51, a dentist in Traverse City, Mich. "When she walks through the door, you're seeing the product of an affair."
But Michigan courts have spurned the DNA results Adams offered in his motions to stop paying $23,000 a year in child support. Now, Adams is lobbying the state Legislature for relief and joining other men in a national movement against what they call "paternity fraud." Read More ..
Who's the Daddy?
Up to three million Britons may be wrong about who their real father is , experts claim. But using DNA paternity tests to discover the truth can cause its own problems.
BBC, U.K., May 16, 2003
Dad's got blue eyes, Baby brown...
When Tessa found out she was pregnant after fertility treatment, she felt a mix of delight and doubt.
This wasn't simply pre-baby nerves - she suspected that her husband might not be the father. For Tessa had started sleeping with a colleague when the stress of the ongoing treatment became too much.
Keen to build a family with her husband, she let him believe the baby was his. But her lover threatened to reveal all if she ended the affair, and Tessa soon fell pregnant again. This time, her lover started to make nuisance calls to her home.
Tessa had no choice but to tell her husband. "I said to him, 'I've had an affair and you may not be the father of my children.' So with that, he went up the stairs, got dressed and left. And that was it," Tessa says in Women Who Live a Lie, a programme for the BBC's Five Live Report.
Would you wear the jacket?
THERE IS A story I used to find hilarious in my high school years about a not too bright man. He was light skinned, his wife was of similar hue, but their first child was born with very dark complexion (darker dan Bello, blacker dan Blakka).
When the man wondered aloud about the baby's complexion his wife assured him that the child was born dark because the child was conceived in darkness (they had sex with the lights off). The man accepted the explanation. Because he loved his wife dearly, he also ignored the fact that the child had other obvious signs of resemblance to the young dark skinned man who did their gardening. To fix the problem, the husband put flood lights, strobe lights, spotlights and forty other lights in the bed room so there would be no more darkness to create dark babies.
United States
"Duped Dads, Men Fight Centuries-Old Paternity Laws"
"Supporters of paternity identification bills point to a 1999 study by the American Association of Blood Banks that found that in 30 percent of 280,000 blood tests performed to determine paternity, the man tested was not the biological father." Read More ..
Download / view pdf file
American Association of Blood Banks
Parentage Testing Program Unit
Annual Report Summary Testing in 2001
Volume of testing 310,490 for the 2001 study
The Supreme Court of Canada -
Cour suprême du Canada
Big win for child identity rights.
Father wins right to be named on birth registration forms. Read More ..
Lack of DNA Paternity testing abuses Dads and Kids
New Zealand Child Support Reform Network.
Press release:
10 November 2004
Lack of free Family Court Ordered DNA Paternity testing abuses Dads and Kids.
"The Labour Government is abusing fathers and children by failing to legislate for free DNA testing to establish paternity", is how Jim Nicolle, spokesperson for the New Zealand Child Support Reform Network, responds to United Futures call for Family Court Ordered DNA paternity tests. Read More ..
Fathers demand mandatory paternity testing
A men's rights group has called for mandatory paternity testing of all babies after government figures revealed almost 600 instances of men compelled to financially support children they did not father.
Since changes to child support laws four years ago, there had been 586 cases of men successfully using DNA testing to show they were not biologically related to children they had been financially supporting, the federal government has revealed to The Australian.
DNA test confirms fraud, annulment granted: judge
The Visayan Daily Star, Bacolod City, Philippines, BY CARLA GOMEZ, February 28, 2009
Bacolod Regional Trial Court Judge Ray Alan Drilon has annulled the marriage of a Negrense couple after a DNA test showed that the child borne by the wife was not the biological offspring of the husband who works abroad.
The family court judge ruled that the marriage of the couple, whose names are being withheld by the DAILY STAR on the request of the court, was null and void.
Due to fraud committed by the wife in getting her overseas worker husband to marry her, properties acquired during their marriage are awarded in favor of the husband, the judge said in his decision, a copy of which was furnished the DAILY STAR yesterday.
The judge also declared that since the overseas worker is not the biological, much less the legitimate father of the child of the woman, the Civil Registrar is ordered to change the surname of the child to the mother's maiden name and remove the name of the plaintiff as father of the child.
The complainant said he was working as an electronics engineer in the United Arab Emirates and on his return to the Philippines in 2001, his girlfriend of 10 years with whom he had sex, showed him a pregnancy test result showing that she was pregnant.
On receiving the news he was overjoyed and offered to marry her. Shortly after he went to Saudi Arabia to work, and his wife gave birth to a baby girl in the same year.
The birth of the child only five months after their marriage puzzled him but his wife told him that the baby was born prematurely, so he believed her, the husband said. Read More ..
Courier-Mail Newspaper
Australia
Unfaithful mother fined $120,170
From correspondents in Rio de Janeiro
Agence France-Presse
September 18, 2007
A BRAZILIAN woman has been ordered by the country's Supreme Court to pay a hefty fine to her husband for failing to mention that he was not the father of two of their children.
The Rio de Janeiro woman, whose identity was not disclosed, was ordered to pay her husband over $US100,000 ($120,170 Australian Dollars) for having hidden from him for almost two decades that the children in question were fathered by a lover, the court's offices said yesterday.
The husband also had sought damages from his wife's lover, the court said.
Man Can Sue Woman For Sperm Theft Distress
Associated Press, U.S.A.
Feb. 24, 2005
CHICAGO (AP) A woman accused of using her lover's sperm to impregnate herself without his knowledge can be held liable for the unwitting father's emotional pain, the Illinois Appellate Court has ruled.
In the ruling released Wednesday, a three-judge panel reinstated part of a lawsuit against Sharon Irons, a doctor from Olympia Fields. The ruling sends the case back to Cook County Circuit Court.
Irons was sued by her former lover, Chicago family physician Richard O. Phillips, who accused her of a "calculated, profound personal betrayal" of him after a brief affair they had six years ago.
Australian Father Wins Paternity Fraud Case
Woman failed to tell man he was not father
West Australian News
21st December 2005
A pregnant woman has a duty of care not to tell a sexual partner he is the father of her unborn child if it is possible another man is the real father a District Court judge has ruled.
And mother-of-three, Kellie Gray, of Pinjarra, was negligent in not having a paternity test done as soon as her son was born, Judge John Wisbey said in his judgement in a damages action by a father who turned out not to be the father.
Rodney Macdonald, of Kewdale, claimed damages of about $70,000AUD from Ms Gray on the grounds that he was tricked into believing he was the father of her son. He gave up a well paid mining job to move to Perth to be nearer the child.